John August

Writing Process

Writing is hard

Psych 101, QandA, Writing Process

questionmarkI’ve been busy
writing a script, and I have the whole idea mapped out in my head. But for
some reason, my writing doesn’t seem to flow. I struggle to get from one point
to the next. Is this normal? If I go back through the script
again after I’ve jotted down my rough dialogue, will it flow then? Do you do
a quick rough draft before you get into the real writing?

–Bob

answer iconWell, are you a good writer? I ask because it sounds like this is your first
screenplay, and there’s every chance you’re a terrible writer. It’s my experience
that most people in Los Angeles feel like they could write a good movie. The
reason why most of them aren’t successful screenwriters is that they’re really
aren’t good writers.

It’s easy to see how they get mislead: If you read a script, you’d think any
monkey could do it. Most monkeys can’t.

I’m not picking on you, honestly. I hope you’re a terrific writer who’s just
realizing how incredibly difficult screenwriting can be. It’s great when the
writing flows, but most of the time, it doesn’t. You work your ass off to get
to the end of a sentence, then start another. You end up deleting scenes that
took you four hours to write, then rewriting entire scripts based on problems
you should have spotted before you even started writing.

It’s not grueling, back-breaking labor like building a road, but it is labor.
It’s exhausting. And while Final Draft might make formatting your script easier,
it’s still just as hard to write.

Often, when I approach a scene, I will do a quick rough draft, by which I
mean all of a scene’s crucial dialogue lines scribbled on the back of an envelope.
It’s mostly just to get the shape of the scene, but it is "real" writing
just as much as the endless tweaking that will inevitably be entailed.

Above all this, I would stress: Don’t wait for flow. It might come; it might
not. But it’s your job to keep writing anyway.

Generating ideas

QandA, Writing Process

Do you have a method to generate your ideas?

–Dean

Not really. I’ve never found it particularly hard to generate ideas. Most
of the time, I have far too many different things I want to write, and
the challenge is deciding which ones are actually worth the investment
of time and thought. So I don’t really have any methods for generating
ideas. I don’t brainstorm. I don’t draw mind-maps. I only outline if
I’m concerned about fitting the pieces together.
In fact, 90% of the time, I’m trying to find methods for shutting competing
ideas out, so that I’ll actually get my work finished. Or get to sleep.
I’m drawing a distinction here between coming up with new ideas (“a biker movie in space”) and figuring out how to solve specific problems with a story or scene (“how should the villain capture the Millenium Harley?”).
Obviously, every writer is going to have to find ways to get over these hurdles
when they come up. A few techniques that often help include:

  • figuring out what the outcome needs to be, then working backwards;
  • deciding what caused the problem in the first place, and whether it can be changed or cut;
  • looking at the moment from another character’s perspective;
  • quickly writing several different solutions, then judging whether one or a combination of several best address the problem.

For all the talk of high-concept comedies or big-idea action tentpole movies, a screenwriter’s daily life is almost entirely about coming up with the “little” ideas that help get the story told.